Interview: Max Frost Brings “Progressive Pop” Sound to New EP

Earlier this month, singer/songwriter and Austin, Texas native Max Frost released his debut EP, Low High Low, on Atlantic Records.

The 5-track collection of music embodies what Frost calls “progressive pop,” drawing on his background in blues and soul while grounding itself in a delightful mix of electronica, pop and hip-hop.

The fusion of genres is just one of the many reasons his single, “White Lies,” has been lauded by the online music community. For Frost, the undeniably catchy song stands out to him as the creative change in his vocal style.

“It was a little bit of me finally breaking into a different singing style than what I was doing before,” he said. “There’s still a blues element there, but the vocal production is very different in the way I’m enunciating things. It’s sort of a weird style that I’d been developing at the time.”

When it came to getting the rest of the tracks for Low High Low together, Frost said he had most of the songs ready to go, but after a hard drive containing music he had spent the past couple years working on was stolen, he had to restart the creative process.

“I actually had to go in and completely recreate a lot of stuff, so a lot of it was a difficult process to sort of not necessarily try to replicate what I already had, but keep the same ideas that were there, build on it and make it new,” he said. “It’s always a really stressful thing to go back and recreate work that you’ve lost.”

Out of the new material, Frost highlighted “Glow Long” and “Nice and Slow” as two of the tracks that received a makeover during the creative process. “I hadn’t put out ‘Glow Long’ before the EP, but the original version I had of that was pretty different from the one we ended up putting out,” he said. “‘Nice and Slow,’ that was actually released; that version is pretty different also. I would say that ‘Nice and Slow’ is much more similar, but ‘Glow Long’ definitely had a revolution.”

It’s been a little over a year since the singer/songwriter left the University of Texas – Austin to pursue music on a full-time basis, and the risky move has paid off. Along with the release of his EP, Frost hit the road with Gary Clark Jr. “We used to play in Austin quite a bit, back in the day, before he came onto the scene.”

Following the tour, Frost plans on working on the full-length follow-up to Low High Low, but for now is going to enjoy being on tour.

“I’m looking forward to seeing more of the country and looking forward to meeting any fans out there that might have checked out my stuff online,” he said. “I’m just excited about getting out there and bringing the groove.”